By Duren Banks, Michael G. Planty, Madison Fann, Lynn Langton, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

Congress enacted the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA) to address the lack of reliable information about law enforcement–related deaths and deaths in correctional institutions. The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted several activities designed to respond to the provisions specified in the DCRA legislation, as well as their own federal mandates, toward a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence and characteristics of deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. Despite these efforts, no national data collection program currently describes all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. These data are critical to support strategies to reduce such deaths; to promote public safety through appropriate responses to reported crimes, calls for service, and police-community encounters; and to build trust with communities.

• More.....

  To better understand the needs around developing and leveraging data from a national data collection of law enforcement–related deaths, RTI International and the RAND Corporation, on behalf of the National Institute of Justice, convened a panel of experts to discuss the challenges to conducting a national data collection, to recommend potential solutions to those challenges, and to recommend research and other applications for the collected data. Through a three-session virtual workshop, participants identified 19 high-priority needs to support a comprehensive and robust data collection program on law enforcement–related deaths. These high-priority needs address challenges related to scope, definition, and detail of the collection; data collection elements and reporting needs; and the utility of the information to inform law enforcement training, programs, and policies.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022. 24p.

By Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Recent nationwide protests against police use of force and perceptions of systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States have sparked renewed conversation about problems in the U.S. criminal justice system. Much of this conversation has been focused on the idea of "defunding the police." In this Perspective, the authors describe police leaders' and practitioners' views on defunding the police — that is, budgeting less money for police and more for other public safety strategies — and explain why revisiting the role of law enforcement in society could have broader appeal than some think. To do this, the authors draw on experience in workshops held over the past seven years by the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative. In these workshops, police leaders and practitioners have voiced frustration with being the default party that is expected to respond to many complex social problems, such as homelessness, substance use, and mental health crises. Practitioners argue that nonenforcement strategies are often more effective than policing in solving many of these problems. Therefore, the authors suggest that there might be significant law enforcement support for some "defunding" strategies — as long as these efforts relieve some of the unrealistic expectations on police. The authors also describe current police functions that could be reassigned to other community partners, discuss factors that communities must consider if they choose to reallocate police functions, and note evidence of broader support for such reforms in the general population.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 20p.

By John S. Hollywood, Kenneth N. McKay, Dulani Woods, Denis Agniel

Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs) are the Chicago Police Department's district-level real-time crime centers, launched in January 2017 and expanded in 2018. They serve as command and control centers for staff to gain awareness of what is happening in their districts and decide on responses. SDSCs support daily and weekly planning meetings and provide near–real-time support for detecting, responding, and investigating crimes as they occur. Their objectives are to improve districts' abilities to reduce crime, hold offenders accountable, improve officer safety, and reduce service times.

In this report, the authors evaluate the processes, organizational structures, and technologies employed in the SDSCs. They also assess the extent to which the introduction of SDSCs was associated with reductions in crime levels in the districts. They find that SDSCs are a promising tool for supporting crime reduction. According to the authors' models, a district that adds an SDSC can expect to see reductions in at least some of the ten types of major crimes modeled, including shootings, robbery, burglary, and criminal sexual assault.

More broadly, the authors see SDSCs as a promising model for improving law enforcement agencies' awareness of their communities, improving their decision-making, and carrying out more effective and more efficient operations that lead to crime reductions and other policing benefits.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 98p.

By Radley Balko

The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other—an enemy.

Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.

• More.....

  In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.Description text goes here

New York: PublicAffairs, 2013. 400p.

By Regina G. Lawrence

When police brutality becomes front-page news, it triggers a sudden, intense interaction between the media, the public, and the police. Regina Lawrence ably demonstrates how these news events provide the raw materials for looking at underlying problems in American society. Journalists, policy makers, and the public use such stories to define a problematic situation, and this process of problem definition gives the media a crucial role in our public policy debates.

Lawrence extensively analyzes more than 500 incidents of police use-of-force covered by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times from 1985 to 1994, with additional analysis of more recent incidents such as as the shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York. The incidents include but are not limited to those defined as "police brutality." Lawrence reveals the structural and cultural forces that both shape the news and allow police to define most use-of-force incidents, which occur in far greater numbers than are reported, she says.

• More.....

  Lawrence explores the dilemma of obtaining critical media perspectives on policing policies. She examines the factors that made the coverage of the Rodney King beating so significant, particularly after the incident was captured on video. At the same time, she shows how an extraordinary news event involving the police can become a vehicle for marginalized social groups to gain entrance into the media arena.

  In contrasting "event-driven" problem definition with the more thoroughly studied "institutionally driven" news stories, Lawrence's book fills a major gap in media studies. It also offers a broader understanding of the interplay between the criminal justice system and the media in today's world.Description text goes here

Berkeley: Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. 254p.

By Jyoti Belur

Extrajudicial executions by law enforcement officers have blighted parts of the world for generations, but criminological coverage has been superficial and selective. It has often been presented as a problem specific to countries associated with military rule, dictatorial regimes and colonial heritage. Permission to Shoot?: Police Use of Deadly Force in Democracies brings a new dimension to the problem of police abuse of deadly force by concentrating on the social and political settings in India and the United States, both large democracies and vibrant superpowers. The research in the book is based on primary sources—interviews with police officers of varying ranks: with those who are involved in the killings; with those who facilitate such operations, and with those who are mute spectators. The book deals with universal, fundamental themes such as: • Why is it that in a democratic country the abuse of police powers can appear to be overtly and tacitly encouraged? • What motivational techniques and justifications are used to override social norms governing moral conduct, centring on the sector of society mandated to use deadly force against civilians? • What makes ordinary, decent human beings do horrible things? Permission to Shoot? seeks to provide broad guidelines and recommendations for reforms in policing policy and practice. The research peels back the opaque communication that often surrounds this issue, but more than that it shows how that kind of communication acts to support the practice itself.

New York: Springer, 2010. 226p.

By Desmond Ang, Panka Bencsik, Jesse Bruhn and Ellora Derenoncourt

How do high-profile acts of police brutality affect public trust and cooperation with law enforcement? To investigate this question, we develop a new measure of civilian crime reporting that isolates changes in community engagement with police from underlying changes in crime: the ratio of police-related 911 calls to gunshots detected by ShotSpotter technology. Examining detailed data from eight major American cities, we show a sharp drop in both the call-to-shot ratio and 911 call volume immediately after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Notably, reporting rates decreased significantly in both non-white and white neighborhoods across the country. These effects persist for several months, and we find little evidence that they were reversed by the conviction of Floyd’s murderer. Together, the results illustrate how acts of police violence may destroy a key input into effective law enforcement and public safety: civilian engagement and reporting.

Cambridge, MA: Working paper, Harvard Kennedy School, 2021. 27p.

By Shelley Hyland, Lynn Langton and Elizabeth Davis

This report presents data on the threat or use of nonfatal force by police against white, black, and Hispanic residents during police contact. This report describes the characteristics of the contact, the type of force threatened or used, and the perceptions that force was excessive or the police behaved properly during the contact. It also examines trends in the threat or use of force and the relationship between officer and driver race and Hispanic origin in traffic stops involving the threat or use of force. Data are from the 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011 Police- Public Contact Surveys, which were administered as supplements to the National Crime Victimization Survey.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2015. 17

By Christopher Stone, Todd Foglesong and Christine M. Cole

The Los Angeles Police Department is completing one of the most ambitious experiments in police reform ever attempted in an American city. After a decade of policing crisis that began with the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and culminated in the Rampart police corruption scandal in 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in May 2000 that it had accumulated enough evidence to sue the City of Los Angeles over a pattern-and-practice of police misconduct. Later that year, the city government entered a "consent decree" promising to adopt scores of reform measures under the supervision of the Federal Court. The experiment in police reform in Los Angeles has two components: the consent decree produced by the Justice Department’s intervention, and the leadership of Chief William Bratton, who since 2002 has focused the Department’s attention simultaneously on reducing crime, improving morale, and complying fully with the consent decree. What has the experience in Los Angeles revealed about policing under a consent decree?

• More.....

  Has the consent decree achieved its purpose? How is the Los Angeles Police Department controlling its use of force; what is the state of police-community relations; how rigorous is the governance and oversight of the LAPD; and how is the culture of the Department changing? Most important, as the LAPD has incorporated the policies and practices specified in the consent decree into its own operations and management, has the Department won the public’s trust and confidence while reducing crime and bringing offenders to justice? To answer those questions, the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School examined the LAPD using multiple research methods. We undertook hundreds of hours of participant observation from patrol to the command staff; we analyzed administrative data on crime, arrests, stops, civilian complaints, police personnel, and the use of force. We compiled surveys conducted over the last decade of police officers and residents of Los Angeles, and then conducted three surveys of our own, one of residents, another of LAPD officers, and a third of detainees recently arrested by the LAPD. Finally, we conducted a series of formal focus groups and structured interviews with police officers, public officials, and residents of Los Angeles. While some questions remain unanswered, this ranks among the most comprehensive assessments ever conducted of a police department outside of a time of crisis. We found the LAPD much changed from eight years ago, and even more so in the last four or five years.Description text goes here

Cambridge, MA: Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School, 2009. 76p.

By Jamein Cunningham, Donna Feir and Rob Gillezeau

Do collective bargaining rights for law enforcement result in more civilian deaths at the hands of the police? Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century. We find no impact on various crime rate measures and suggestive evidence of a decline in police employment, consistent with increasing compensation. Our results indicate that the adoption of collective bargaining rights for law enforcement can explain approximately 10 percent of the total non-white civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement between 1959 and 1988. This effect is robust to a contiguous county approach, accounting for heterogeneity in treatment timing, and numerous other specifications. While the relationship between police unions and violence against civilians is not clear ex-ante, our results show that the popular notion that police unions exacerbate police violence is empirically grounded.

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2021. 75p.

By The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division

There are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Law enforcement is a demanding, rigorous, and – at times – dangerous profession. The vast majority of men and women who police our communities do so with professionalism, respect, bravery, and integrity. But as we have seen around the country, when police departments engage in unconstitutional policing, their actions can severely undermine both community trust and public safety. Today, our country is engaged in a critically important conversation about community-police relations. This report describes one of the United States Department of Justice’s central tools for accomplishing police reform, restoring police-community trust, and strengthening officer and public safety – the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of the civil prohibition on a “pattern or practice” of policing that violates the Constitution or other federal laws (the Department’s other tools are described later in this document).

• More.....

  Description text goes here

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2017. 55p.

Read/Download

By Tanaya Devi and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 673p

By David Spencer

As a new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is appointed, Policy Exchange has published our report, “‘Policing Can Win’: The New Commissioner’s First 100 Days” by David Spencer, Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime & Justice.

The central thesis to this report is that ‘Policing Can Win’ over those who would commit crime and disorder in our communities. In addition to summarising the core issues the Met has faced over the last five years, this report sets out the three areas where substantial changes must be made:

Leadership at Every Level: Providing the leadership that the officers and staff of the Met need to effectively fight crime and keep the public safe. Fighting Crime and Reconnecting with the Public: Reigniting the tradition that only by working closely with the public will the police be successful in retaining the public’s confidence, fighting crime and disorder, and keeping the public safe. Police Officer Conduct and Competence:Eliminating from policing those who are incompetent or would break the public’s trust in policing by committing criminality or misconduct.

• More.....

  DeDuring and by the end of the Commissioner’s first 100 days in office, things need to feel different.Different to the men and women of the Met, different to those who hold the Commissioner to account, and most importantly different to Londoners. This report seeks to give the Commissioner a head start.scription text goes here

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 67p.

Read/Download

By Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt and Stephanie Fahy

Though recognition of the importance and severity of human trafficking has grown in recent years, the identification and investigation of human trafficking cases remains a complex undertaking for local law enforcement. Effectively responding to human trafficking requires officers to notice and identify victims who often have been hidden from or had poor relationships with law enforcement in the past (e.g., women in prostitution, migrants, immigrant community member, and poor women). Sometimes officers may be reluctant to intervene in sex and labor trafficking situations due to a belief that victims were complicit with their own victimization. Local law enforcement response is further complicated by immigration issues since many local agencies have made a decision to not inquire about citizen status during routine policing activities as a means of building trust and confidence in the local community. Additionally, the crime of human trafficking may take backseat to other institutional priorities such as violence and drugs. Finally, officers must look at old problems or traditional crime categories such as prostitution through a different lens and therefore reclassify "offenders" such as prostitutes as victims.

• More.....

  Since the enforcement of the law in the United States is predominately carried out by the thousands of local, county and state agencies representing diverse environments and local crime problems and coming from a variety of different organizational structures, fully understanding how law enforcement perceives and responds to the problem of human trafficking in the United States necessitates inquiry into the specific experiences of these agencies. The majority of research on law enforcement responses to human trafficking to date has focused on the experiences of a narrow number of large municipal police departments who were perceived to be most likely to come into contact with incidents of human trafficking. In response, this project addresses four main areas: 1) the perceptions of trafficking held by law enf rcement and the preparation agencies have taken to address the problem, 2) the frequency in which law enforcement identifies and investigates cases of human trafficking and 3) the characteristics of those cases investigated by law enforcement and 4) the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases. Description text goes here

Boston: Northeastern University, Institute on Race and Justice, 2008. 256p.

By Magnus Lofstrom, Joseph Hayes, Brandon Martin, and Deepak Premkumar

Stark racial inequity has long been a deeply troubling aspect of our criminal justice system. In recent years, traffic stops have emerged as a key factor driving some of these inequities and an area of potential reform. Are there opportunities to identify kinds of traffic stops that could be enforced in alternative ways—potentially improving officer and civilian safety, enhancing police efficiency, and reducing racial disparities—without jeopardizing road safety?

To explore this question, in this report we use data on 3.4 million traffic stops made in 2019 by California’s 15 largest law enforcement agencies to examine racial disparities in stop outcomes and experiences across time of the day, type of law enforcement agency, and type of traffic violation.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2022. 29p.

By Frank R. Baumgartner; Derek A. Epp; Kelsey Shoub

Suspect Citizens offers the most comprehensive look to date at the most common form of police-citizen interactions, the routine traffic stop. Throughout the war on crime, police agencies have used traffic stops to search drivers suspected of carrying contraband. From the beginning, police agencies made it clear that very large numbers of police stops would have to occur before an officer might interdict a significant drug shipment. Unstated in that calculation was that many Americans would be subjected to police investigations so that a small number of high-level offenders might be found. The key element in this strategy, which kept it hidden from widespread public scrutiny, was that middle-class white Americans were largely exempt from its consequences. Tracking these police practices down to the officer level, Suspect Citizens documents the extreme rarity of drug busts and reveals sustained and troubling disparities in how racial groups are treated.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 294p.

By Greg Ridgeway

In 2002, the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) joined with other agencies and organizations to improve police-community relations in the city. This report focuses on the analysis of racial disparities in traffic stops in Cincinnati. The authors find no evidence of racial differences between the stops of black and those of similarly situated nonblack drivers, but some issues can exacerbate the perception of racial bias.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009. 93p.

By Carl Lieberman

I examine how racial disparities in police use of force vary using new data covering every municipal police department in New Jersey. Along the intensive margin of force, I find disparities that disfavor Black subjects and are larger at higher force levels, even after adjusting for incident-level factors and using new techniques to limit selection bias. I then extend empirical Bayes methods to estimate department-specific racial disparities and observe significant differences across and within these hundreds of departments. Finally, I find that certain municipal factors are useful predictors of whether a department has a large racial disparity against Black civilians, but the most informative variables can change when considering different levels of force. These findings suggest that ignoring heterogeneity in police use of force misrepresents the problem and masks the existence of both departments with very large disparities and those without apparent disparities against Black civilians, but the variation even within departments may make identifying and treating inequitable departments difficult.

Washington, DC: Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau , 2022. 71p.

By Elizabeth Luh

Biased police officers may purposely mis-record, or mask, the race of citizens that they interact with in order to evade detection. Indeed, journalists uncovered widespread evidence of such masking among Texas Highway troopers from 2010 to 2015. I propose a new test of racial bias in the presence of masking that is more powerful than standard tests and is well-suited to explore the rich heterogeneity in bias. Using various data-driven techniques to detect masking, I estimate that 24% of 130,240 searches were masked, with over half being Hispanic drivers being mis-recorded as white when searches failed to turn up contraband. I find that Hispanic and white troopers are biased against non-white motorists, with Hispanic motorists being treated the most unfairly. Using my model, I also find evidence of institutional racial bias and ‘bad apple’ troopers across Texas.

Ann Arbor, MI: Department of Economics; University of Michigan at Ann Arbor2019. 45p.

By National Police Agency

An overview of the history, organization, administration and policing functions of the police of Japan. Covers traffic police, security police, cyber security, police science, international cooperation. Includes statistics on arrests, crimes known and clear, traffic violations.

National Police Agency. Tokyo. Japan. 2001. 70p